How Industrial Private 5G Can Help Enable Sustainable and Agile Industrial Operations

For the past few decades, wireless communication technologies have primarily addressed the problem of delivering high-speed data to consumers using smartphone devices. The standardization of 5G within the 3GPP began with a vision to address more verticals than smartphones. As a result, 5G was designed from the ground up with ultra-reliability, low latency, and a wide range of spectrum options in mind to meet the demanding requirements of many mission-critical vertical industries. These new capabilities make 5G ideally suited for industrial automation and the Industrial Internet of Things. Through private networks, 5G can provide ultra-high capacity and low latency to a multitude of industrial sensors, actuators, and controllers in standard and safety control applications, either in mmWave or traditional sub-6 GHz spectrum. 5G is expected to become a viable technology to enhance or even replace traditional wired industrial network connections, changing the game in terms of cost, flexibility, reconfigurability, sustainability, and time to market for global industrial operations.

Manufacturing industries need to be flexible and respond to changing market demands. For example, they need to reorganize their industrial operations to meet the changing demands during the pandemic: from soda to disinfectants, clothing to medical masks, or auto parts to ventilators. The experience is that agility, efficiency, resilience and sustainability are important aspects of smart manufacturing.

Industrial private 5G is an enabler of digital transformation in smart manufacturing, helping deliver business outcomes such as sustainability and flexibility by supporting key application use cases:

• Connected Workplace apps improve visibility and intelligence through mobile digital tools such as analytics, digital twins, and augmented reality (AR).
• Mobile asset applications increase the flexibility and efficiency of autonomous vehicles, such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).
• Untethered fixed industrial asset applications improve sustainability by reducing the need for wired infrastructure to connect static equipment, static equipment to rotating parts (slip ring replacement) and mobile equipment (operable when static, inoperable when moving). Untethered fixed industrial assets can also reduce the time to adjust industrial operations to respond to changing market conditions, thereby improving flexibility.

Can Industrial Private 5G help enable these application use cases in manufacturing and process operations? To address this question, Rockwell Automation (an industry leader in industrial automation) partnered with Ericsson (an industry leader in cellular network infrastructure), Qualcomm Technologies (an industry leader in 5G technology), and Verizon (a leading network service provider). The research collaboration evaluated Industrial Private 5G technologies with EtherNet/IP™ connectivity, Rockwell Automation’s core industrial communications technology. Key learning objectives were to ensure that EtherNet/IP networks were ready for Industrial Private 5G and to confirm that Industrial Private 5G was ready for demanding EtherNet/IP applications.

This illustration is a simplified representation of the developed testbed, illustrating an unconstrained fixed industrial asset application use case consisting of:

• Rockwell Automation standard and safety controls. One zone controller with GuardLogix® safety controller. 12 distributed zones with FLEX5000® standard and safety I/O, representing slides, machines or equipment. Note that the purpose of the safety controller for each distributed zone is only to collect test bench telemetry data.
• Ericsson Radio Access Network (RAN) infrastructure. Consists of mmWave base stations using 28 GHz (n261) and LTE Band 2 using Release 15 and private 5G Core (3GPP Release-15, non-standalone (NSA), on-premise).
• Qualcomm Mobile Test Platform (MTP). A mobile test platform for data collection and traffic flow analysis, used as an industrial 5G-to-Ethernet adapter, called a user equipment (UE).
• Verizon’s thought leadership in 5G industrial network innovation made a significant contribution to defining the requirements, target feature set, and scope of the test platform, including a roadmap for future validation requirements.

Testing was conducted according to a comprehensive test plan provided by Rockwell Automation with stringent zero-failure success criteria. It outlines a series of test cases to establish reliable EtherNet/IP standard and safety (CIP Safety™) I/O connectivity from the GuardLogix zone controller on the left, with a range of requested packet interval (RPI) settings from 5GRAN to FLEX5000 standards, and safety I/O connectivity in zones 1 to 12 on the right. The RPI is the rate at which the controller and I/O exchange data.

The successful test results demonstrate that the current state of industrial-specific 5G (3GPP Release-15, NSA, on-premise, mmWave spectrum) has low enough latency and jitter to support RPI settings that are superior to Rockwell Automation’s default settings for EtherNet/IP standard and secure I/O connectivity. These RPI settings will support many untethered fixed industrial asset applications (skateboards, machines or equipment) that use EtherNet/IP standard and secure I/O communications.

The achievements of its objectives emphasize:

Ethernet/IP is ready for 5G for industry.

• The current state of industrial-specific 5G is ready for EtherNet/IP standard and safety I/O applications.
• Industrial-specific 5G can help achieve business outcomes such as increased sustainability and greater agility in industrial operations.

The research collaboration will continue with plans to evaluate Ethernet/IP time synchronization (CIPSync™) and distributed motion (CIPmotion™) applications over standalone (SA) industrial-specific 5G at 3GPP Release 16. Initial proof-of-concept test results are promising.

In summary, thanks to the collaboration between Rockwell Automation, Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies, and Verizon, we were able to verify that a true 5G-enabled industrial automation test use case works as promised. As a result, industrial operations can leverage the 5G standard to meet high-performance wireless connectivity and service assurance needs as they evolve toward smart manufacturing.